


Twained Hearts Yearning

by Darklady



Category: Downton Abbey, Jeeves & Wooster
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, because Jeeves can fix anything, but only if Jeeves takes charge, offstage and yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3261830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darklady/pseuds/Darklady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phillip, Duke of Crowborough, comes to Jeeves with a proposition.<br/>No, not THAT sort of proposition.<br/>Not exactly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twained Hearts Yearning

“I’m sorry, your Grace, but I can not.” Jeeves considered that he could not hold this conversation either, at least not here in the open hallway outside his bedroom in the servants’ section of Lady Worplesdon’s country manor. Not in company with the dubious Duke of Crowborough.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask. I want your services…”

And that was enough of that! Jeeves slid ice into his tone. “I am quite content with my current position.”

“Oh... That” Crowborrow dropped the impeding arm, looking rather like he didn’t know where to up the extra limb. “Sorry, shouldn’t laugh, but I assure you that I have no thought of encroaching on your current… employment. I want your services as a matchmaker.” The stress on the last word was whispered but evident.

“A matchmaker, your Grace? You can not possible think that I would encourage any young lady of my employers acquaintance…”

“Not like that.” Now the arm was flipping around, rather as if reaching for a lost meaning. “Will you listen? You are normally not so thick, Jeeves.”

“I am normally not propositioned by… former employers… in the hallway of my current employer’s aunt’s estate.”

“Just… listen. One minute. Less. Three sentences.”

“Very well.”

“I don’t want you to connect me to an eligible bride.” His hands found something to do – if by task one meant messing his already disordered hair. “God knows I’ve made my own utter mess of that disaster. I want you to find a way to get a message to Thomas Barrow of Downton Abbey.”

“Barrow?” Jeeves had some faint familiarity with the name, but it was not one he connected with the Downton estate.

“Don’t give me that look. I know he’s a one of your sort.”

“MY sort, sir?” This was a conversation intolerable anywhere – not merely inappropriate in location but dangerous in content.

“I mean a valet, butler… that sort.” The duke fell back a step. “A member of your servants’ club.”

“The Junior Ganymede?”

“That’s the ticket.” The smile was back, broad and vapid on his aristocratic features. “Not to say about other sorts as well. Because…well, one doesn’t mention.”

“Most certainly not in the attic hall, your Grace.” 

A clump interrupted, the sound of a heavy shoe on the bare risers of the narrow back stairs. 

Both men pulled themselves to formal attention. 

A maid – one of the tweenies that brought up laundry and coal to the servant floor – appeared.

“Your Grace. I see you are lost.” Jeeves pronounced every word clearly, intent on being overheard. “Perhaps I might guide you back to the billiard room? 

Crowborough caught the hint. “Yes, thank you. I do find myself rather turned around.”

“Then if your Grace will follow me?”

They passed the girl, Jeeves leading the duke out of the menservants’ quarters. In minutes they were again alone – this time in the ground floor parlor. 

Jeeves made a show of preparing the duke a drink.

“You were saying?”

“You know about the disaster with my wife.” 

Crowborough’s face twisted at the word. Rather, Jeeves thought, like that of a petulant toddler. To himself, he thought the simile quite apt. To the duke, however, Jeeves said nothing.

“That left me rather embarrassed – in the monetary as well as the other sense.” Crowborough continued. “Disaster from the start really. Didn’t know if it felt worse when she accepted me or when she flounced off back to her mother. But?” Here the man’s face brightened like an Irish Sweepstakes winner. “My good news – and this isn’t yet known – is that she has met some muscle bound so-called ‘cattle baron’ back in the American Territories and is thus as eager to be divorced from me as I ever was from her. More so, given that she is prepared to pay up should I sign the papers. “

“That would seem fortunate.” Jeeves would have preferred to avoid even that much informality, but so long a speech required some reply.

“Surprisingly so. Thought the process would take years and feed the lawyers, but it turns out to be a matter of my signing off and the job is done. Seems that in the Dakota territories they let a woman cast off her husband at a whim.”

Jeeves considered a repeat of the pervious remarks, but refrained. It might come across as pushing.

“The settlement is not great, mind you.” Crowborough paced around the billiards table. “Not enough to rebuild my estates here. It will let me establish a home in someplace more economical.” He nodded, pleased with himself. “I plan to sail to Italy as soon as the checks have cleared.”

“And you wish to take with you a British valet?”

“I wish to take Thomas.”

Ah! And now Jeeves recalled where he had heard the name before. Barrow had been on staff when Jeeves’ then-employer had paid a visit to the late Dowager Duchess Crowborough. A younger Reginald Jeeves had taken note of the young man. He was quite handsome and Jeeves had never been blind. Or not totally. He had, it seems, been blind in more significant ways. He had no clue back then that the junior footman had ingratiated himself with the son of the house in quite such an… immediate… manner.

Still? Jeeves was hardly a man to object to such … domestic tranquilities. “Might I suggest you write him?”

Crowborough laughed – sharp and bitter. “He’d burn the letter. Like I did.”

Jeeves restrained himself – with some force of character – from either inquiring as to past contremps or pointing out he had not meant that sort of a missive. One could safely write that one was looking for a valet and would appreciate the recommendation of a suitable candidate. Any man who missed the meaning? Well, Jeeves – or any of the Senior Ganemedians - would count that grounds for revocation of club membership.

“And don’t suggest that I head to Downton and try in person,” Crowborough continued his monologue, oblivious to the silent rebuke being sent across the chamber. “My last visit there…” Phillip, penniless Duke of Crowborough, had no need to explicate. He had only managed to get in here by asking to survey the architecture of the new post office. It was dreadful, of course. A disaster designed by self-flattering idiots. That made it – on reflection – a fair match with most of the other forces that had discomforted his life.

Shaking off bitter reflection, he returned to his immediate desires.

“Jeeves. I need you to find some way to get invited to Downtown – rather to get Wooster invited to the Abbey and bring you along – so you can plead my case with Thomas in person.”

X X X X 

TBC???

OK – so I have not the slightest idea where this came from. Musey is, I think, on some sort of strange drug these days.

It does rather seem like the start of a standard Wooster novel, complete with yearning hearts and at least one unintended engagement. (Although who's engagement to whom would be a question.) I doubt I will ever continue this, so please feel free to fill in the rest of the chaos with your own imaginings.

©KKR 2015


End file.
